An extremely talented two-way center. Bäckström stands out with his tremendous hockey sense and soft hands. His technical skills are very good and one of his trademarks is the way he moves the puck into the offensive zone. He stickhandles really well through traffic. Offensively his passing skills are superb. His flip passes are perhaps a bit risky, His shot is decent, although it can and should be improved, and although he is still more of a playmaker than a scorer, he has a pretty good scoring touch.

Defensively Bäckström takes care of his responsibilities and is a rather good penalty killer.
He could use some work on his conditioning and skating. Not slow by any means, but there is some room for improvement. Bäckström is not an overly physical player, but he is pretty strong and tough to knock the puck off.